Placer DA agrees to plea deal with co-defendant of former MLB player accused in Tahoe murder
Placer County prosecutors agreed to a plea deal with a former nanny implicated in a murder case that includes a former Major League Baseball player accused of shooting his wife’s parents three years ago at their Lake Tahoe-area home.
Daniel Serafini, 51, and family friend Samantha Scott, 34, are accused in an alleged burglary at the home of the married couple, 70-year-old Gary Spohr and 68-year-old Wendy Wood.
Spohr was shot once in the head, killing him during the June 5, 2021, burglary at the Homewood residence on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, the victims’ family has said. Wood suffered two gunshot wounds to the head but regained consciousness to call authorities for help. Although Wood received extensive rehabilitation, she died a year after the shooting.
The Placer County District Attorney’s Office in fall 2023 charged Serafini and Scott with murder in Spohr’s death, along with a charge of attempted murder in the shooting that wounded Wood. The filed charges indicate prosecutors believe Serafini shot his wife’s parents, not Scott.
On Thursday, Scott pleaded guilty to a felony charge of being an accessory after the fact in the crime, the District Attorney’s Office confirmed on Monday. Her sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled, and prosecutors said the accessory charge could result in a sentence of 16 months to three years.
The D.A.’s Office declined to discuss any further details about the plea deal.
“Since the co-defendant’s case is set for jury trial, we will not be commenting further so as to protect the integrity of the ongoing proceedings,” according to a written statement from the District Attorney’s Office.
As a result of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped charges of murder and first-degree residential burglary against Scott, who was the family’s nanny.
Serafini’s murder case continues. He appeared briefly Monday morning for a hearing that was then postponed to Feb. 24 in Placer Superior Court. His murder trial has been scheduled to start the week of March 17. He remains in custody at the South Placer Jail.
Scott, who had been in custody since her October 2023 arrest, was released from jail after pleading guilty last week. Judge Garen J. Horst ordered Scott to be released on her own recognizance under supervision with GPS monitoring, filed court document show.
The judge ordered Scott to surrender her passport, and not travel more than 150 miles from Reno without permission from probation officers. Horst scheduled Scott to return to court April 18 for a review hearing and status update, court records show.
It’s not certain when Scott would be sentenced, what exactly her sentence will be and whether she will testify for the prosecution in Serafini’s trial.
On Friday, Horst ordered that Scott’s plea agreement with prosecutors and a transcript of Thursday’s hearing remain sealed. Prosecutors and Scott’s attorney, along with the court, agreed that public disclosure of those documents could subject Scott and Serafini to harassment or intimidation.
Only Serafini faces special allegation and circumstance enhancements that allege he used a .22-caliber gun to kill Spohr during a burglary while lying in wait for the victim, according to the criminal complaint. The enhancements made Serafini eligible for the death penalty if convicted. But the District Attorney’s Office in September said it would not to seek a capital sentence.
Serafini also faces a charge of first-degree residential burglary stemming from the June 2021 shooting. Only Serafini faces enhancements for allegedly using a gun and causing great bodily injury to two elderly victims during the burglary, along with an enhancement that alleges he used a .22 caliber gun to shoot her.
At the time of the shooting, Serafini was married to Spohr and Wood’s eldest daughter, Erin Spohr, and they have two children. Serafini faces an additional charge of child endangerment listing his two small children as victims on the day of the shooting, according to the criminal complaint.
Serafini’s wife and children had been at the home earlier in the day and left before the fatal shooting occurred. Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Miller, who is prosecuting the case, has argued that Scott waited outside as Serafini went into his in-laws’ home unnoticed and hid inside until after his wife and children left before shooting his in-laws.
The prosecutor also argued that people who had known Serafini heard him offer to pay $20,000 to have his in-laws killed in 2012, openly say in 2016 that he hated his in-laws and say he was going to kill them a few months before the shooting.
David Dratman, Serafini’s attorney, has argued that the prosecution did not present any evidence that “definitively” identifies him as an unidentified masked suspect captured on video entering and exiting the couple’s home on the night of the shooting.
This story was originally published February 10, 2025 at 1:49 PM.
